It had to happen. Seriously, with some of the things I’m seeing in the news – and why I resumed watching the news, my blood pressure and I have no idea – if I don’t say something about it, I risk losing my mind completely.

Now look: Obama had caved on several issues important issues, and that was disappointing. But on quite a good lot of them, he had stood firm. He started the Iraq pullout. He got Osama bin Laden. As soon as he had taken office, he had made it clear that he was a pro-choice president and reversed some abortion restrictions that Bush had enacted. He started the progress of, and right now, under that healthcare law, people can actually at least start to get medical care. Hell, even the job market is starting to show signs of life again.

We all know that the Republicans are not okay with what Obama is doing. Actually, no: that’s the biggest understatement of this year, and the year’s only 10 days in. To say that they’re virulently opposed everything that he’s doing – and I mean everything – would be approaching a decent description, but some of the behaviors I’m seeing aren’t even classified as infantile. There’s such a disconnect from reality with those people that I started to question their sanity. They literally have no idea what life is like outside their comfortable bubbles of McMansions, private flights, campaigns, expensive restaurants, etc.

As a preliminary note. I’m glad that Michelle Bachmann is no longer in the race. That woman heeds to return to high school to repeat US History, and maybe then I’ll believe that she has two brain cells to rub together.

And yeah, the Republican party had departed from any sense of conservative and went right into stark raving bat-guano insane. Let me break this down candidate-by-candidate, at least the ones who have even a fighting chance at the nomination.

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Newt Gingrich.
Let’s say it bluntly: he is a complete fucking bastard. I mean, truly. I cannot believe some of the things that had come out of his mouth before, and I’m confident that no one forgot when he had served his wife while she was dying from cancer. What sort of a sociopath does that, I’ll never know, and I have studied sociopaths for years.

This idiot said that he would go to the NAACP convention to discuss the importance of paychecks vs. food stamps and pulls out the “I have black friends, so I’m not racist!” defense. Look, it’s the same effect as someone who’s homophobic touting that they “have gay friends” – sorry, not buying it, and if those people knew your views, they would lose you as a friend, double-time. I’m pretty sure that if Colin Powell had been on hand when those things were said, then he would punch Newt so hard that the jaw would have to be replaced. If there is anything that anyone on public assistance had ever fought against, it was the infamous welfare-queen stereotype perpetuated by Ronald Reagan, a stereotype that is blatantly false, and the absolute last thing anyone wants is to be patronizingly explained why one should want one and not the other. Here’s a hint: no one who is on food stamps wants to be in the situation that requires them to be on food stamps.

Also, I have to ask…why does he assume that welfare recipients are necessarily black? Racial bias, hello there, long time no see. /spit. And recent stats actually turn that little bias on its head.

I’ve also not forgotten his attempt to blame the recession on the unemployed, which I’ve filleted on this blog last year. Again and with feeling: no one who is unemployed wants to be.

Also, his verbalizations on gay marriage make my blood boil. So, per him, gay married couples are only friends. So that thing that they do in the bedroom that the government is mandated to stay out of under Lawrence & Garner v. Texas (2003) is..? Yeah. Last time I checked, the Supreme Court had made it abundantly clear that the government doesn’t belong in people’s bedrooms. Considering Newt’s divorce, I severely doubt that this man has room to open his mouth about marriages, period.

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Ron PaulCorporatist lackey, but this one doesn’t even make any effort to hide it. One of his popular stances is to eliminate the minimum wage. I’m sorry, what the fuck? Seriously. Are we looking for a comeback of the conditions of the Industrial Revolution era? Just because the people who had survived that time aren’t alive anymore doesn’t mean that it never happened.

Oh, and he wanted to eliminate OSHA. Required reading: The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. That book inspired the actual formation of FDA and OSHA, and had also put Teddy Roosevelt, an avid hunter, off meat for some time. I think someone had skipped that in high school English.

Also, he went on to say that Social Security is unconstitutional. So to pay into my own safety net is unconstitutional? But it wasn’t unconstitutional when the little money that I paid into Social Security goes out as a government loan/bailout. Gee, funny how that works.

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Mitt Romney
Ah, Mittens. The guy who freely admits that he enjoys firing people, and we all know that he was so gung-ho for blocking the extension of unemployment benefits that he wouldn’t have given a damn for a government shutdown.

I also have zero tolerance for bullshit artists who can’t even keep up their own lies. European society and safety nets create more poverty? How? By actually taking care of their citizens? And how many people die in France because they couldn’t get to the doctor in time to catch that lethal cancer? Zero. Shock, horror, people there are taken care of! And oh, the Netherlands are closing their prisons because there’s not enough criminals. Of course, European society is soooo awful.

And I just found out about the dog incident. Intro to Criminal Justice class: the first identifier of a sociopath is harming animals. No person who will do harm to an animal should ever come to the White House, point blank. Do you want to know what animal abusers grow into? No? Good, you don’t want to know.

He’s so anti-abortion that he is keen on criminalizing the process altogether. But never mind the fact that his own wife had to have a procedure done to save her life that classifies as “partial birth abortion” (a total fallacy of a term, just FYI; either it’s a birth or it’s an abortion). So the only moral abortion is the one in his family? So that mother of three kids who can’t afford to become a mother of four, or a teenage girl who doesn’t want to birth her uncle’s baby is an amoral harlot who should be in prison, but his wife is scot-free? Sorry. Can’t have it both ways.

The fact that he and his wife had brought the deceased fetus home to dress it up, sleep with it, and to have the kids say goodbye to it is, I’m sorry, sick. While I know that people grieve differently, and that it’s definitely normal to want to, say, photograph in the event of a child death, there is no reason to traumatize the children with it. If this was any other family, social services would be called immediately. No exception here, but oh wait, he’s a politician.

A complete racist, to boot, and spouting about Obama’s “elitism” for wanting all kids to go to college. While I’m not a fan of forced attendance, I find Obama’s sentiment admirable, because a lot of the high-school grads who want to go to a good school are unable to because they can’t afford it. And about cutting welfare as a Christian value? Now look, I’m an evil, amoral atheist and all, but I’m damn sure that the Bible made it abundantly clear to give to the poor, not the other way around. Just this thing called reading comprehension talking.

First of all, last time I checked, death threats are illegal. I don’t give a damn if you’re using the Bible to do it, it’s still a death threat. I would love for some men in suits with stern faces to knock on this guy’s door.

Secondly, about Michelle, and making the slur an immediate follow-up to the fauxpology. WHAT. You can’t even apologize for the fact that you acted like an asshole without making yourself look like an even bigger asshole?

Thirdly, Bush had spent more time on vacation in his first two years than Obama in his entire term, and you don’t see people bitching about that, do you? What about all the Republicans who had used the taxpayers’ dollars to send to their mistresses? Gay escorts? Oh, I have a long memory, believe you me, and it seems like every scandal involving a prostitute or a closet has to do with a Republican. Jim McGreevey seems to be the only normal person in politics who had come out of the closet in the past two decades.

I will make no bones of it: the Republican Party candidates are insane. Stark-raving, bat-guano, no functioning firing synapses in cranium insane. They will do absolutely anything to make sure that their financial gain will remain secured and that their equally rich friends will continue to have money to hand over to them, never mind where that money comes from. The environment, poor people’s backs, safety net money – doesn’t matter who gets hurt by their greed, they will keep pushing until they’re making like Scrooge McDuck and taking a swim in the treasury, while everyone and everything else be damned. Doesn’t matter that the climate is changing, doesn’t matter that there is an increase in natural disasters, as long as the treasury is full, right?

I have no idea when this sort of callous, sociopathic disregard for the outside world became the norm, but I am sickened to the core that those people are 1. on a national platform, and 2. broadcasting their virulent misogyny, racism, homophobia, and greed for the world to see with little to no repercussion. It wasn’t too long ago when expressing that sort of rhetoric would be warrant enough to get you torn to shreds in every medium, and quoting a Bible verse that Kansas Republican had quoted in regards to Pres. Obama would be cause for a visit from gentlemen with stern faces and crisp suits.

Really. Is the racism of the GOP so pervasive and virulent that, when the first black President had taken office, that it suddenly became par for the course for all the middle-aged white men who never got over the Civil Rights Act to spew out their verbal diarrhea?

Because really, that’s all I’m seeing here in the GOP primaries. A bunch of middle-aged white men who never got over the 1950s, who got rich and want to stay that way at the cost of anyone and anything. Bankrupt Social Security so that the elderly will have nowhere to go? Cut the minimum wage for a return into the sweatshops of the Industrial Revolution? Whatever works, right?

I find it disgusting. And I find it even more disgusting that they’re calling themselves Christian. I’m sorry, no. I’ve read the New Testament, and you can’t convince me one whit that Jesus had thought even anything remotely like those people. I can only wonder what he would say/do if he were around to see this sort of mess. Bloody hell, I’m not a Christian, and I have more compassion in my toe than those people have collectively.

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For the record? I’m a progressive liberal and unashamed of it, and absolutely refuse to vote for any candidate less educated and intelligent than myself. I am not party-affiliated, nor will I ever be. I am pro-choice, pro-regulation, pro-union, pro-Net Neutrality, pro-social safety nets, and pro-universal healthcare. And I will not hide that for a split second.

I also don’t post about politics very often, but this had gotten to me to the degree that my blood pressure had been spiking whenever I would turn on the news, and that means that it has to come out somewhere.

I don’t post political stuff often, and I hope that it’s the last time I will for a while. But really, enough is too much.

and Rick Santorum finished so far back coming out of New Hampshire, that it doesn’t really make sense for him to go to South Carolina. heck, he didn’t really do much of any campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire combined. same thing with Rick Perry, he didn’t campaign in Iowa, and only got 1% of the vote coming out of New Hampshire, but, yet, he’s going to campaign in South Carolina. this makes NO sense. if you’re THAT far behind going into the South Carolina primary, GIVE UP, IT’S OVER!